Mobile  Learning  Challenges

There are educational, technological, design, evaluation, and ethical challenges that must be taken into consideration when opting for mobile learning. In this section each of the above challenges is discussed.

3.1.1 Technological Challenges

The key technological challenges that must be considered are (Vavoula and Sharples, 2009; Elias, 2011):

• Limited, poor, or unreliable connectivity can sometimes in some places be an issue. This means that learners can sometimes struggle to get connected and access the information they need.

• Diversity of operating systems. The current most popular are Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry’s BlackBerry 10.

• Diversity of mobile devices, there are many manufacturers and models of mobile devices out there.

• When using mobile phones as the medium, relatively small screens can limit the content that can be delivered, limited input methods can, in some cases, limit the learner’s capabilities (Shudong and Higgins, 2005).

• The battery in mobile devices normally suffer short battery life, especially when multi-tasking,.

The above technological issues should be taken into consideration, as much as possible, when designing a mobile learning activity.

3.1.2 Educational Challenges

Naismith et al., (2004) argue that one of the biggest challenges was to deliver learning into a seamless daily routine using mobile technologies without learners noticing that they are learning. While this may be true of young learners such as school children with difficulty in engaging, adult or university

students need to be self-aware with independent learning skills (Meyer et al., 2008). They need to reflect on what and how they learn.

Adapting to students’ learning styles could cause something of a challenge to educators. Traxler (2007) discusses the fact that learning styles would affect the way mobile learning is conceptualised. He argues that different learners may adopt different learning styles in various times and places. Thus mobile learning needs to adapt to students’ needs by meeting a number of criteria:

• Personalised learning: learners are diverse and individual, which means that learning should be developed and delivered with these issues in mind.

• Situated learning: learning takes place in a real world context.

• Authentic learning: learning includes real world problems and projects that would interest learners to get involved.

Furthermore, Vavoula and Sharples (2009) consider the decision of whether mobile learning is a formal or informal type of learning challenge. They argue that a learning experience could have both elements of formal and informal learning. An example they outlined was students visiting a museum with their school, where a museum is considered an informal setting and school is formal.

Thus, when deciding to ‘go mobile’, educators need to define the learning style that will be supported and the purpose of the application. For this research, the main pedagogical theory is Lave and Wenger’s (1991) situated learning theory, having elements from both collaborative and informal learning, where the purpose of the application is to provide students with

contextual information (Ryu and Parsons, 2008), to help them in understanding the situation they are currently in.

Willingness to engage and motivation of HE students is a topic that has been researched since the 1980s (Zepke and Leach, 2010). Indeed, researchers are constantly trying to identify new ways of motivating HE students (Kuh et al., 2008; Kuh, 2009; Chen et al., 2010; Manuguerra, and Petocz, 2011).

Some researchers have argued that the introduction of technology enhanced learning has increased the number of engaged students (Manuguerra and Petocz, 2011; Junco et al., 2013). However, there are still a number of students who tend to be less engaged with academic life due to institutional and non-institutional factors such as family, friends, health and employment (Zepke et al., 2010). This could be one of the challenges faced when deploying a new technology enhanced learning (TEL) intervention in higher education.

3.1.3 Ethical Challenges

When using context-aware or location-aware services, learners need to be assured that their privacy is not compromised (Wishart, 2010). However, referring back to the discussion above about informal learning where educators are not certain of what learning activities are carried out, it is sometimes difficult to know in advance what data researchers are looking for.

Therefore, getting an informed consent on something that is not clear is a major challenge (Vavoula and Sharples, 2009; Wishart, 2009).

Wishart (2009) created a framework consisting of the ethical issues for a researcher or an educator to take in consideration. The framework consists of

ethical principles. According to Wishart (2010), it is sometimes difficult to meet all principles for a given issue. Thus, an agreement between the researcher and the learner can be made regarding that key issue.

3.1.4 Design Challenges

Designing for mobile learning in one of the biggest challenges, whether it is designing the activity or the system. Quinn (2011, p.133) states: “If you don’t get the design right, it doesn’t matter how you implement it”. Designing is challenging, from gathering requirements to prototyping. Once again, technology plays a major role in the designing phase. Designers must take into consideration the technological elements of the device they are designing for, or whether they are designing for multiple devices and/or multiple platforms (Elias, 2011). The size of the screen is one of the significant issues when designing a mobile application. Moreover, since smartphones are portable, the mobility of the device and the user should be considered when designing (Huang, 2009). Furthermore, understanding the context in which the mobile learning application will be used has a significant implication on the design of the application (Kukulska-Hulme, 2007; Savio and Braiterman, 2007; Cherubini and Oliver, 2009). This is discussed further in 3.2.

However, since mobile learning is fairly new and innovative, some researchers felt it was necessary for mobile learning to have its own design requirements framework, which differs from established eLearning frameworks (Parsons et al., 2007; Economides, 2007; Liu et al., 2008). A number of design requirements frameworks will be discussed later in detail in 3.2.1.

In designing a mobile learning activity, educators should take into account all elements of students’ needs. As discussed in 3.1.2, the design should allow for personalisation and authenticity. More discussion on designing for mobile learning will follow in section 3.2.

3.1.5 Evaluation Challenges

Evaluating mobile learning poses a significant challenge, from evaluating the application itself to evaluating the outcomes and learning. According to Vavoula and Sharples (2009), ‘…capturing learning context and learning across context’ is one of the main challenges of evaluating mobile learning.

Yet, this is one of the main characteristics of mobile learning. Evaluation becomes more problematic when learning occurs in an informal setting where sometimes the learners are not known in advance and/or the objectives are not clearly defined (Vavoula and Sharples, 2009). Furthermore, assessing the students’ achievements and learning progress is difficult in an informal setting.

The learners themselves may initiate many learning experiences and thus, it can be difficult to assess and monitor process and progress, especially when multiple contexts and technologies are involved (Vavoula and Sharples, 2009). Other challenges arise from the effect of the surrounding environment including interruptions and variable contexts (Billi et al., 2010). This is discussed further in this chapter.

There are ways in which learning can be tracked and analysed, such as adding logs or tracking mechanisms to the system. However, this directly leads us to another significant challenge that should not be ignored: the

from the point discussed earlier in 3.1.2, the lack of motivation of HE students, could influence the ability to conduct a full evaluation of any new TEL innovation in HE. If some students are not willing to try something new, not willing to engage or participate in a study, this will challenge researchers in evaluating such an intervention.